beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I'm lacking big thinking about Buffy of late. There seems to be a bunch about masculinity and violence, direct parallels between Spike and Riley, and Riley and Adam of course, plus some stuff about how useless Giles and Xander feel now they're not defined by their jobs. Giles and Xander keep trying to help with the violence cause they've got none jobs and want to be useful, Xander beats up Spike and it's a sign he cares, Giles gets all sad because nobody is scared of him any more. Spike of course refers to his lack of capacity to do violence in direct comparison to neutering. Masculinity and violence. Big thing.

... big thing covered by every other show ever. Bored? Kinda. I mean, not bored of the episodes, but not coming out with meta.

All of them feeling less masculine because Buffy is more successful at violence than they ever could be, and Spike and Riley eroticising that, that's a thing BtVS does a little different. Mostly if the girl is kick arse it's to teach a guy to be better than her by the end of the movie. Here she just stays better, consistently. Yaays.

The same sex desire metaphor in the magics, the way Willow and Tara have to be, er, subtle, and the way Giles and Ethan are at the pub... a couple of old mystics, sorcerers, the night is still our time... yeah, still liking that, except for the not trivial thing where not being allowed to show stuff sucks. But the metaphors are pretty and the guys at the pub are, well, I'm coming up with plausible and I don't know if that's what I mean? Giles responding when he thinks Ethan is calling him attractive, intense eye contact, history together... you can see it happening, and you can see it in those scenes.

Ethan and the Fyarl thing: you can read it as Ethan didn't do it. Way back at the start of Buffy, episode three, it was established that one way to undo every spell in progress was to kill the caster. But when Giles the demon breaks in to grab Ethan, Ethan says "I can't undo you if you kill me!" Okay, he could be lying about everything, but if true, it means it wasn't his spell.

If it was then it's a classic be careful what you wish for. Giles wanted to be scary.
But that could also mean he got very, very drunk and did something unwise to himself. Unlikely, sure, but if you want to tell that tale...

For G/E shippers there's the teensy problem of him apparently trying to get Giles killed when he tells Buffy "It killed Ripper and now it's trying to get me!"
He could simply be mistaken about how far gone Giles is, if he can't get back from there. He could be making a complex statement about tweedy Giles and his ongoing fight with his own Ripper side. Or it could just be mischief to cover his own escape. Granted Buffy tries to kill Giles because of it, but she epic fails. And Ethan predicted that, reckoned "You're only going to make him angry." If he don't believe Giles can be hurt then it's mischief, not murder.

But then there's "I've really got to learn to just do the damage and get out of town. It's the 'stay and gloat' that gets me every time."
He's saying he did damage, and should have run before Ripper caught up.

Probably meant to be Ethan then.

But there's loopholes available if you want them. Like, what was he even doing in the place a demon was meant to rise and didn't anyway?



... Ethan Rayne can be so much more interesting if you read a little depth into a character that's pretty much just an excuse for mayhem to happen. But mayhem of the insides to outsides sort, which is always very character based fun.



Giles chasing Professor Walsh because she called him an absent male role model, always funny, but again connecting masculinity and violence. Giles feels powerless and judged, because a woman is implying a woman made herself without him. So he gets big and scary at her. Because clearly it's fun to use threats to counter words. And clearly it's more funny because it's Giles, who is usually words guy. But it's a moment that comes from him, not Ethan, even if Ethan did give him the outsides to do it.


Rupert Giles: earning his nickname since the early 70s.


I'm dissatisfied with how they used Walsh. She was evil psychology lady, and some of that was clever. Introduced doing stuff like controlling the discourse by naming herself as both good and evil versions, smart on several levels, and funny from writers cause they know what we don't. Creepy stuff that reminds me of abusers when she controls Riley just by mocking or relabelling his feelings, so he's just being college boy when he's trying to have opinions. Makes him feel small and then tells him to make her proud, so all his self worth is supposed to come from her reactions. Reworking his base code, like Adam said. Must have taken a lot of creepy manipulative work. And then making soldiers that don't ask questions... that's such a wrong view of soldiers. So all of that is perfectly good evil overlord stuff. But it's wrapped up with Riley and Adam calling her Mother on different occasions, and the weird thing with watching Riley have sex and getting rid of his girlfriend. Creepy gendered stuff. With no matching good version. I mean, if they're exploring mothers, Buffy has one of those, but no, they're just contrasting with Giles for some reason, current teacher vs ex teacher, at a point Giles is distanced from Buffy. Also there's previous evil teacher ladies but no hint of comparison. Comparing what Walsh does to what Watchers did would be perfectly reasonable, but you have to reach to other seasons to do it. Which, okay, it's season 4 and you'd expect some stuff to just be background, but I'm dissatisfied with how it turned out. There should be more women, more mothers, more teachers.

... I'm watching Buffy and thinking there need to be more women, even though Willow and Tara and Anya and Buffy are all right there.

I'm quite a lot creeped out by how Xander treats Anya. I mean I know she's an ex-demon but the comparisons with her behaviour have her turning up on list of autistic characters, so this time every time Xander corrects her on social skills is kind of grating. Like she's not meant to have her own thoughts and feelings but has to fit the mask on to be acceptable to him. It's not that she's actually learning compassion and empathy and that good stuff, she's just being told 'we talked about this' and changing how she behaves. I feel like Xander doesn't actually like Anya, he just likes how she makes him feel, and part of that is him feeling like he has the knowings and can teach from a position of moral superiority.



I'm super grumpy today and don't know if it's the TV that's always grump making or me that's always in a grump. So it goes.



The first three seasons, the basic metaphor was 'high school is hell'. Okay. They shift to college, but after the room mate episode I'm unconvinced they upgraded to 'college is hell'. More of a general 'young adulthood is hell'. Everyone trying to tell you who to be and shape you into who they want, but at the same time leaving you to sink or swim and not supporting you like you were supported a minute ago. Not knowing how to relate to adults, who are now meant to be other adults like you, but get cranky if you treat them that way and make you feel weird. Being expected to make a quantum leap in maturity and then frowned on for thinking you're mature. The whole thing with the drugged Initiative agents seems less metaphorical and more just a thing in itself, but I guess the pressure to perform physically and mentally is a college thing. Even Willow's magical lashing out is the thing where having a little power does not always go so good. So the metaphors are still there.



I'll watch more episodes later.

So far this weekend I have read the essays for class on Monday and read a whole lot of GURPS Magic rules, then figured out a set of spells for a priest of Janus.

Clearly this is a productive use of time. *nods*

Ethan's spells are hard to model because there's a half a dozen spells that almost but not quite do what he did, and also because he cast a spell on a whole town at once, which has power requirements that are off the scale. Assume the Hellmouth is a Very High Mana area (so absolutely anyone can cast spells, and mages have a lot of bonus), and that Janus did most of the lifting. I still don't even know how to start calculating the costs. Impressive, anyway.

Ethan: very strong indeed.

But we knew that.

The other thing about spells is they all have the same names, but to ally them with specific gods you really have to think about the tone or flavour of things. Like the spell 'Drunkenness' has effects kind of like getting every adult to act like drunk teenagers, but being drunk isn't especially associated with Janus. Getting people to express their repressed sides *is*, in the Buffyverse. So you rephrase it just slightly, and it's a spell with the right theme. Weaken Will works too. Emotion Control and Suggestion don't quite cover it, I think. Madness, being really specific, with a Delusion, is probably enough... but it's really rather thorough. And to incorporate real world knowledge like Xander's soldier did would require a ton of Knowledge spells too. Basically you pretty much have to say 'A God Did It', but it's hard to game that.

Ethan: god likes him. His god, anyway.


Which leaves you to wonder why a god of doors didn't bust him out of prison.

But Planar Visit (Dreamlands) treats the dream worlds as an actual world as real as the demon dimensions, so getting to wander around in there is pretty powerful of itself. And since you leave your body behind it don't much matter where you left it. Unless you're worried about the damage...


I had mostly set out to invent some characters to throw at each other in an original story world. I got a couple of people, but then I thought of Ethan, and, well, it's not like I've any particular reason to focus. Ethan is fun. Storytelling gold.


I should probably sleep at some point.

Come on in for a truly transformative Halloween... ( Read more... )


... If Captain Jack Harkness got changed into his costume, would he just be himself, or would he be 40s!Jack?
... and what would Ianto be wearing...? Aha... UNIT cap!

So... we have two weeks until the Torchwood finale, and then there's Doctor Who, and I have watched basically TW and DW all year... so why am I waking up with Giles/Ethan bunnies? Especially G/E bunnies that cover basically the same setup/pilot territory as the 0,1,2 Ripper stories I've already written?

... well I don't know about why today, but I know the general why.
New canon. I don't like it, but it's out there. So now the stories shift to try and accomodate the comics without losing what's important to me.

It's a bit more In Nomine Ethereal Players Guide than I was planning, with G&E wandering around the Dreamscape and finding all the ways it connects to other people in their lives (fun!) and out of the dream-valley all the ways it connects to Higher Powers... and the other sort. It would be about the power of dreams to impact the waking world. Initially Giles would not be convinced that anything that happened there was any kind of important. Which would be fun because it means he has no particular responsibility to stop Ethan doing anything... so instead of kiss him / kill him he can pretty much forget the punching parts. Until Ethan winds him up sufficiently from a standing start. But then something from that world would make a mess in his awake world, and all the dreams he's been wandering around in, his friends dreams, slayer dreams, prophecy dreams, they'd start to impact his waking life. And then he'd have to take it all serious - including Ethan.

I'm currently much more detailed on the character interactions and world mechanics (dreamscape works through metaphor - Giles has a library where every dream he ever did or could dream is neatly stored. When Ethan calls him hidebound they walk into a different metaphor - Rupert's old flat, complete with the record collection of his dreams. It's all vinyl, but Ethan doesn't really notice enough to tease about it.) The whole 'what happens next' of the plot requires quite a lot of work. Also, I might have to actually buy comics, on paper, to make sure I always know what happens next. Not that I can make ongoing stories fit in with ongoing canon. But.

... now I has bunny that would require complete Buffy rewatch to write.




I also has Torchwood bunny of how the Time Agency recruits in the early 51st century, back when their public agents like poster-boy couldn't go because they'd cross their own timelines. And it winds together with one of the surviving seven and the missing two years. And then I wonder if I should even go there, given that canon is totally going to eventually. But... it's a really neat bunny... and also in my head the other Time Agent looks like Peter Wingfield.

Most of my other bunnies though - the unwritten ones from after season 1 - are running into season 2 and feeling total tone clash. Which is sometimes why I want to write them. But.

I attempted sleep.

Then I gave up and ended up thinking about Ethan. And Andrew. I'm just in the mood for an old degenerate whispering suggestions to a sweet young thing who hasn't quite decided how naughty he wants to be. And Ethan knows secrets about Andrew none of the Scoobies know. Something about Halloween. Andrew hisses, never tell, but Ethan says they could do it again. Any time. He has just the spell. And he knows Andrew still has the ruby slippers.



Then of course some numbskull decides that they've just got to get in to the flats, via the time tested method of leaning on the buzzer until someone answers. Possibly followed by kicking the door in. I don't know, they could have been going up the stairs. Carrying an elephant.


Outside there's a noise I at first ignore, until I realise I've only heard sounds like that when staying at Heathrow, and even then they didn't go on quite so long or loud.
But there's no boom, so it's probably alright.
Besides, if aliens crash land here, do I really want to get in the way? Sure, the sex gas sounds like fun, but it's not like I have an ex to look up.


So now I give up, get up, take the painkiller for the niggly little not-quite-a-headache, and see if the world came up with anything brilliant in the last hour.
After turning the brightness on the monitor down.


That kind of night.

Ripper
Fools Journey
2
Higher

Part: 7/7

Rating: I'm aiming for a tone much like Buffy or Angel, which are 15 to 18 rated in the UK.
Pairing(s): Giles and Ethan are in the same story, therefore it is vaguely G/E
Spoilers: Post Chosen, post Not Fade Away. Refers to earlier series canon.
Third in my Fool's Journey series, the rest in memories here or my fic tag. This one should basically make sense as a stand alone.

Summary: Rupert Giles and Ethan Rayne. Best mates, worst enemies, sometimes both at once. They've got a lot of history. So even when the Initative took Ethan away, Giles was sure he'd see him again, sooner or later...
Now the late Ethan Rayne is turning out to be twice the trouble, and Giles must be the one to deal with it.


38000 words total, 1400 words this part, complete

Disclaimer: Joss told us to "Write fan fic."
So they're still his toys, but he seems to not mind us playing with them.
No money, no harm.

Thanks to pinkdormouse for beta.

Author's notes and warnings: ( Read more... )

Part 1/7 here
Part 2/7 here
Part 3/7 here
Part 4/7 here
Part 5/7 here
Part 6/7 here

*** *** ***
( Story Continues )
*** END ***
*** (BEGINNING) ***

All my fic here


Rate fic, poll

Ripper
Fools Journey
2
Higher

Part: 5/7

Rating: I'm aiming for a tone much like Buffy or Angel, which are 15 to 18 rated in the UK.
Pairing(s): Giles and Ethan are in the same story, therefore it is vaguely G/E
Spoilers: Post Chosen, post Not Fade Away. Refers to earlier series canon.
Third in my Fool's Journey series, the rest in memories here or my fic tag. This one should basically make sense as a stand alone.

Summary: Rupert Giles and Ethan Rayne. Best mates, worst enemies, sometimes both at once. They've got a lot of history. So even when the Initative took Ethan away, Giles was sure he'd see him again, sooner or later... Now the late Ethan Rayne is turning out to be twice the trouble, and Giles must be the one to deal with it.


38000 words total, 7850 words this part

Disclaimer: Joss told us to "Write fan fic."
So they're still his toys, but he seems to not mind us playing with them.
No money, no harm.

Thanks to pinkdormouse for beta.

Author's notes and warnings: ( Read more... )

Part 1/7 here
Part 2/7 here
Part 3/7 here
Part 4/7 here

*** *** ***
( Story Continues )
*** *** ***

Part 6/7 here

Ripper
Fools Journey
2
Higher

Part: 3/7

Rating: I'm aiming for a tone much like Buffy or Angel, which are 15 to 18 rated in the UK.
Pairing(s): Giles and Ethan are in the same story, therefore it is vaguely G/E
Spoilers: Post Chosen, post Not Fade Away. Refers to earlier series canon.
Third in my Fool's Journey series, the rest in memories here or my fic tag. This one should basically make sense as a stand alone.

Summary: Rupert Giles and Ethan Rayne. Best mates, worst enemies, sometimes both at once. They've got a lot of history. So even when the Initative took Ethan away, Giles was sure he'd see him again, sooner or later...
Now the late Ethan Rayne is turning out to be twice the trouble, and Giles must be the one to deal with it.



38000 words total, 5180 words this part

Disclaimer: Joss told us to "Write fan fic."
So they're still his toys, but he seems to not mind us playing with them.
No money, no harm.

Thanks to pinkdormouse for beta.

Author's notes and warnings: ( Read more... )

Part 1/7 here
Part 2/7 here


*** *** ***
( Story Continues )
*** *** ***

Part 4/7 here

Ripper
Fools Journey
2
Higher

Part: 1/7

Rating: I'm aiming for a tone much like Buffy or Angel, which are 15 to 18 rated in the UK.
Pairing(s): Giles and Ethan are in the same story, therefore it is vaguely G/E
Spoilers: Post Chosen, post Not Fade Away. Refers to earlier series canon.
Third in my Fool's Journey series, the rest in memories here or my fic tag. This one should basically make sense as a stand alone.

Summary: Rupert Giles and Ethan Rayne. Best mates, worst enemies, sometimes both at once. They've got a lot of history. So even when the Initative took Ethan away, Giles was sure he'd see him again, sooner or later...

38000 words total, 2200 words this part

Disclaimer: Joss told us to "Write fan fic."
So they're still his toys, but he seems to not mind us playing with them.
No money, no harm.

Thanks to pinkdormouse for beta.
Also, thanks to my f-list for all the 'shocky' discussion.

Author's notes and warnings: ( Read more... )


*** *** ***
( Story Begins )
*** *** ***

Part 2/7 here
Part 3/7 here



PS if you like, you can pretend it says shaken instead of shocky. Like choose your own adventure! ;-)

Rewatched Band Candy.

Not enough Giles. Not enough Ethan. I typed not enough Oz, so my subconscious has an opinion on that.

Shirtless Angel kind of... Well, shirtless Duncan katas look a lot better.

But very fun episode.

Oz is so sweet. Just in general, but specifically the way his face lights up when Willow walks in to the Bronze unexpectedly. Totally cute.

Ethan has few moments, but they're interesting.
In particular this time through I noticed

Trick: Demand's high.

Ethan: I thought it might be.

Trick: That's the reason I love this country. You make a good product, and the people will come to you. Of course, a lot of them are gonna die, but that's the other reason I love this country.

They stop walking, and Trick steps over to the man inspecting the boxes before they get sealed.

Trick: Hey! Don't sample the product.

Man: But I didn't.

Trick grabs him by the overalls, pulls him into a headlock and jerks his head around, breaking his neck and throwing him to the floor. Ethan looks away in distaste. Trick straightens his jacket and checks his pinky ring. They continue to walk.

Ethan: Okay. Uh, how did you know he was...

That transcript calls it distate. The script on the DVD specifies that "Okay" is (shaken).
And btw, how *utterly* useless is that DVD format for the script? 94 button pushes to get to that screen! If I wasn't so obsessive I'd have given up before the credits finished.

BUT, my point - if you watch Ethan through that whole sequence, he looks very uncomfortable. Fake smiles, polite to the boss, but his reaction to the death is definitely not gleeful. You get a lot of Ethan characterisations that have him gloating over the pain and death. Well, maybe pain, but the death shook him. Says so in the script. And his reaction to Trick saying "Of course, a lot of them are gonna die," was also not entirely positive.

There are different ways to

(interrupted by cleaner, helpful money person, and trip to the shops, I lose my train of thought and post this anyways)

sometimes people walk away because they want to be alone.
Sometimes they walk because they wanna see if you care enough to follow them into hell.
I think I went the wrong way.


I hear that, and I'm suddenly sideswiped by a G/E plot bunny in the middle of watching Babylon 5.

*writes this, goes back to DVD*

This doesn't work as a first thing to watch.
I'm not sure it works as a last thing to watch.
It is rather unsatisfying as a narrative. Lots of little bits and pieces, many moments that should have emotional whammy, mostly skimmed over quickly from a distance.
I feel all :-/ about it.


I also feel rather sick because I forgot and left the cake packet next to the sofa. I'm sure there were six in there a film ago...



Almost forgot to mention, this is one of the Robin in latex episodes.
He played a Minbari called Coplann, on the Grey Council.
Love that man's voice.
And he can act even under that much makeup. There was some nice subtle stuff going on with his character.
Says I with fannish eyes, I know, but B5 must have liked him, he played, what, 4 different roles? All in alien makeup. Obviously because he's good at it.

He said at a convention once, he now can't act without latex somewhere on his body...
:-)